Newly Appointed Top Cop Portland-"I will Kill You", said Dorothy Elmore
The following story really bother me. How can a law enforcement agency promote within their ranks someone in this case a woman, to second in command to head up the Portland, Oregon, police department? This plain does not make any sence. Please send you outrage emails to oreilly@foxnews.com and let your voice be heard.
Dorothy Elmore, promoted last month to a position as an assistant Portland police chief, could have been fired from the force eight years ago after threatening to kill her then-husband, also a cop, prompting him to get a restraining order that barred her from their home and a police precinct.
Nine days later, the husband, Vince Elmore, asked the judge to vacate the restraining order, saying he hoped his wife could keep her job.
The 1997 petition for a Restraining Order to Prevent Abuse alleges that Dorothy Elmore, then a detective assigned to the Police Bureau’s Auto Theft Task Force, slashed all four tires of a car the Elmores jointly owned, shredded his clothes, left threatening phone messages for him at work and threatened to kill him and some of his friends with an unspecified weapon.
A Multnomah County Circuit judge granted the restraining order Sept. 15, 1997. The order barred Dorothy Elmore from the couple’s Gresham home and from the Police Bureau’s Northeast Precinct, where Vince Elmore worked. It also restricted telephone contact with her husband to conversations about their two children, then ages 10 and 4.
Dorothy Elmore, in an interview Thursday in a Police Bureau conference room, admitted slashing tires, threatening her then-husband and leaving the phone messages, though she said she could not remember whether she threatened to use a weapon.
“I’m sure I used those exact words, though: I will kill you,” she said.
She said she was disappointed in being asked now about her behavior then, saying it was “all in the past.”
She said she was disappointed in being asked now about her behavior then, saying it was “all in the past.”
“My daughter doesn’t need to read this,” she said. “ I was at the bottom of a valley of despair at the time.”
Dorothy Elmore had filed for divorce from her husband July 31, 1997. The divorce became final Aug. 12, 1998. They had been married since July 28, 1984.
Under a 1996 amendment to the federal Gun Control Act, a person convicted of a domestic-violence misdemeanor loses the right to possess a firearm or ammunition.
With such a conviction, Dorothy Elmore could no longer have been a cop. There is no exemption for law-enforcement or government employees.
She said she confessed everything at the time to her commander at Southeast Precinct, Stan Grubbs, now the Police Bureau’s assistant chief for operations.
Grubbs said through Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Brian Schmautz that he met with Dorothy Elmore and a precinct lieutenant at the time, that she was honest with him about her actions, and that he notified the chief’s office and Police Bureau detectives of the conversation.
Records concerning the Police Bureau investigation are in storage and unavailable until next week, Records Manager Debra Haugen said.
GUNS CONFISCATED
Al Orr, the Northeast Precinct commander at the time of the restraining order and now an assistant police chief in Tigard, said in an interview that he feared for Vince Elmore’s safety and that of other officers. He said as a protective measure he placed Dorothy Elmore’s picture by the front desk with an order that she could not enter without an escort.
After Vince Elmore made his allegations in court, Portland police and the Multnomah County district attorney’s office began investigations into domestic violence in their relationship, which died, Vince Elmore said, when he stopped cooperating.
Dorothy Elmore was transferred temporarily to the Telephone Reporting Unit. She also received an official letter of reprimand for misuse of Police Bureau property after she placed a business card on the windshield of a car belonging to a woman she believed her husband was having an affair with. Vince Elmore denied any affair.
In the restraining order, the judge also ordered that she not “possess or own any firearm or other deadly weapon.” Dorothy Elmore said Portland police detectives confiscated a .357-caliber Magnum from her home and took a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun from her police locker. She got the weapons back after Vince Elmore dropped the restraining order, though Dorothy Elmore said she has not carried a gun off-duty since.
Vince Elmore also indicated in the petition that he would need police intervention to pick up their two children and that alcohol was a factor in his wife’s behavior. He asked that his wife be removed from their home, and wrote that a Portland police captain, whom he did not identify, advised him it was unsafe for him to go home alone.
Knowing his allegations, if proven, could end in a conviction for misdemeanor harassment and possibly end his wife’s career, Vince Elmore asked a judge to vacate the restraining order in an affidavit filed Sept. 24, 1997.
“Petitioner does not want respondent to loose (sic) their employment,” the affidavit reads.
Instead, their divorce records show, the Elmores’ lawyers drew up a Stipulated Mutual Restraining Order that did not refer to harassment of or threats against Vince Elmore.
HUSBAND CHANGED MIND
In an interview, Vince Elmore, now a sergeant assigned to Southeast Precinct, declined to say specifically why he declined to pursue his own allegations.
“I still have to work here, man, and she’s a big boss now,” he said. “You’re putting me in a precarious position right now. But I’ll tell you, my kids were a big consideration, my main concern. I didn’t want them to have to go through all that along with the divorce.”
Vince Elmore said in the interview that he feared that if he pursued the case and his wife were fired, their children would hold it against him and his wife might come after him in court seeking alimony payments.
Police Chief Derrick Foxworth was a captain at Northeast Precinct then and has known Dorothy Elmore since 1981 when they were young recruits in the academy together. He became chief in September 2003.
Foxworth transferred Dorothy Elmore from captain of the School Police Division, where she had been since July 2003, to captain of the Personnel Division on Aug. 25. And though he said he considered other choices, he promoted her 25 days later to assistant chief of services, overseeing the Records, Internal Affairs and Personnel divisions among others. She started that job Oct. 6.
Susan Murphy Milano is the author of "Moving Out Moving On", when a relationship goes wrong and "Defending Our Lives" getting away from domestic violence & staying safe.
Website: www.movingoutmovingon.com
Email: Kindlivingpress@aol.com
